Yet if one of her friends fails to keep in contact with her, she feels wounded, anxious.
Her feelings for others are transient but powerful. Like a fire that burns hot, then rapidly cools.
Do others feel the same way? There have been men—there have been women—who’d seemed to care for Clare, from whom she’d retreated hastily.
Through her life as an adult Clare has had a succession of lovers. As she has had a succession of friends. Many more friends than lovers, but many more lovers than she has relatives. Until now.
“Oh, fuck. Do I care?”
Impulsively she decides to open a bottle of wine. Chardonnay, purchased a few weeks ago when she’d contemplated preparing a meal with wine, for friends, but other plans intervened. To celebrate, Clare thinks.
To fortify her nerves. Just this once.
Until now Clare has never drunk alone. It’s a very self-conscious act, drinking alone. Something sad about it. Defiantly, she empties her glass.
Time to call home in St. Paul. Her strategy is to call at a time when it’s likely that her father won’t be home, but her mother will be.
Not that Clare doesn’t love Walter. But speaking with her (step)father is sometimes awkward. Clare has always been able to speak more openly, more warmly, with Hannah than with Walter, though it can’t be claimed (Clare supposes) that she has ever been able to speak to Hannah without a sense of—is it unease . . .
Clare is in luck, Walter isn’t home. Hannah answers the phone on the first ring, sounding eager, lonely.
Yet there’s an air of subtle reproach in Hannah’s greeting. Clare tries to remember—does she owe her mother a call? Has she failed to call back when Hannah has left a message? Inadvertently, Clare often erases messages from Hannah in her voice mailbox.
Clare has called Hannah with the intention of sharing her good news, but somehow the opportunity does not arise. Guess what, Mom? Good news!—these cheery words fail to come.
Indeed, Clare glides over news of her own (private) life. She is grateful that Hannah has a fresh slate of complaints about a nemesis-colleague who has bedeviled Hannah Seidel for what seems to Clare like decades. She doesn’t mind at all, as she has sometimes minded, that Hannah doesn’t seem to recall having told Clare any of this before. Within the family, old news is good news, she thinks in a small attempt at wit.
Then Clare hears herself ask something extraordinary: Does Hannah know if Clare’s biological parents are living?—a question that brings their conversation to an abrupt halt.
Biological parents. A clinical and graceless term but (Clare thinks guiltily) preferable to birth parents.
“But—why are you asking such a question, Clare—now?”
Hannah’s uphill full-velocity voice has shifted to a lower gear. Her eyes, near visible in faraway St. Paul, Minnesota, have narrowed, her mouth has become a small, angry wound.
Clare says she’d been meaning to ask. For a long time . . .
“But why?”
Why, when you have us. Why do you care about them!
“Why? It seems like a natural question . . . I am thirty years old.”
“Thirty years old! What has that got to do with it?” Hannah is genuinely perplexed, annoyed.
“I mean—I’m not a child any longer . . .”
“But it was all explained to you, Clare. Years ago. Don’t you remember?”
“I—I—I don’t think that I remember . . .”
Clare tries to recall—exactly what, she doesn’t know.
“We were provided very little information, Clare. And it has been a long time now. More than a quarter century since you came into our lives out of the unknown.” Hannah speaks reproachfully, as if it were Clare’s fault.
Out of the unknown. A stinging remark.
“Your father and I were told very little about you, and none of that information has changed in subsequent years. All that we knew, we told you years ago.”
Clare listens, chastened. She can’t bring herself to say, But I don’t remember. I need to be told again. Please!
“I was just wondering if you knew—if they are living. Or—if . . .”
Hannah’s voice is loud over the phone, huskier: “We never knew if there was a they, or just a she—a mother. There’d been an accident—we were told—but we never knew the details. No idea how old your biological parents were at the time. You have to understand, Clare, this was a long time ago and things were done differently then. There was shame attached to giving away a child to be adopted, and there was a feeling, not exactly shame, but something like complicity in shame, in adopting. Taking advantage of someone else’s unhappiness. We had to work with a Catholic agency through the Planned Parenthood agency in Minneapolis. They insisted upon guaranteeing anonymity if either side requested it—the parents who were adopting and the—other . . .”
Clare is stunned by Hannah’s outburst. She has never heard her mother speak so openly. Now Clare is beginning to remember. Anonymity. Sealed records.
Don’t ask. Futile.
“There was nothing more we could do, Clare. We couldn’t push for information to which we had no legal right. We had no idea what we were doing, really—adopting a baby was totally new to us. It was a very emotional time. We’d assumed we would be adopting an infant—of course—but we were very grateful to adopt you . . .”
Hannah’s voice trails off, as if she realizes what she is saying.
“Clare? We wanted only what was best for you.”
An odd thing to say. What was best for—who?
Numbly, Clare assures her mother yes, she understands. Of course.
Everyone wants the best for an orphaned child they have never seen before.
Clare understands that she should end the conversation. She is upsetting Hannah. But she isn’t able to end it. Her curiosity is like a rabid thirst, parching her mouth. “What part of the country did they live in, did you know? My parents.”
My parents. This is a mistake, Clare has misspoken.
Hannah says curtly that she doesn’t know. If she’d ever known, she doesn’t remember.
Then, relenting: “Well, maybe—I have the impression they’d lived in New England.”
“Not the Midwest?”
“Why is it important where they were from? Has someone tried to contact you?”
“No!” Clare is quick to reply. “But do you think you could send a copy of my birth certificate, Mom?—I would appreciate it.”
At Clare’s age, Mom has become an awkward term of endearment. Even as a girl, Clare had had difficulty pronouncing Mom clearly.